Where's 007 when you need him? Can't they just fly a British agent into Russia to kill everybody and make shit blow up?

Yeah but how can you tell at a glance which junk a raccoon is packing? Also, gay raccoons? - Hugh Akston
Nothing you can say is as important as the existence of a functioning marketplace of ideas, go set yourself on fire. - JasonL

Tillerson calls the President a fucking moron. Not fired. Tillerson says that a poisoning was "clearly from Russia." Fired within a day. Meanwhile, Sarah Huckabee Sanders won't even say the word Russia when asked about the administration's support for the UK.

"VOTE SHEMOCRACY! You will only have to do it once!" -Loyalty Officer Aresen

Tillerson calls the President a fucking moron. Not fired. Tillerson says that a poisoning was "clearly from Russia." Fired within a day. Meanwhile, Sarah Huckabee Sanders won't even say the word Russia when asked about the administration's support for the UK.

If Russia DOESN'T have something on Trump then he's giving it away for free. And Trump doesn't even pay what he owes, let alone give something for free.

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

thoreau wrote:I cosign all of Eric's points, and everything Jason said except about Russia. I won't belabor the Russia point, I'll just note that (per another thread) if you apply Occam's Razor to Trump's statements about Russia it's pretty clear that--at a minimum--Trump knows Putin was pulling for him and didn't mind. Put that together with Fredo's willingness to meet with Russian operatives and you have to wonder...

I think you are doing Occam’s razor wrong. The razor says he’s an inconsistent retard with scumbag friends. Nations try to interfere through propaganda all the time for their preferred outcome.

I don't give a shit about the troll farms. I never have.

I give a shit about the President having dirty business ties with Russia and Russian government assets showing up in his campaign. I give a shit about Manafort. I give a shit about Russian government agents meeting with his idiot son to offer the fruits of their hacking. (Not their trolling, their hacking.) I give a shit about Jared Kushner trying to use Russian diplomatic facilities because he wanted to talk about things without the US government knowing. I give a shit about his campaign staff having lots of useful idiots tied to Moscow.

Russians can post whatever they want to post on Facebook. I don't give a shit. When they get people onto Trump's staff, that I care about quite a bit.

I actually care about the troll farms because it's so shady and it's not even aimed at anything but undermining democracy. VOA and RT are above board. They're pretty clear voice-of-the-state outlets. The troll farms aren't promoting Russian interests, so much as trying to poison the well of American interpersonal relations. It's nuts. There's enough of that happening organically that we don't need a foreign power devoting budget to making it worse.

So I think the troll farms should legitimately be a point of contention between the US and Russia. Putin is playing a nasty game and what appears to be a new one. I think he's probably the most dangerous non-Cold-War threat to liberalism and even market capitalism since fascism.

But the troll farms aren't Trump's problem.

It's entirely possible that Trump didn't offer a quid pro quo. I think at this point it's silly to think that some of his staff didn't offer a quid pro quo. And it's even more possible that Trump's finances are tied up to Putin, and that again is a serious problem, because Putin's whole schtick is destabilizing everyone who's not him, so he can be the biggest bully on the block.

Admittedly the CIA has played this game in smaller countries for decades, but we've left well established democracies mostly alone. I see no evidence that we've been undermining Italy. They do it themselves. I doubt we were stirring up the communists vs the Le Pens in France to... something something.

Our goals have been pretty clear. A combination of stability and liberalism, using instability only in places where it is necessary to undermine Soviet influence or parties that would destabilize friendly/strategic interests. So yeah, we supported the Kurds to destabilize Saddam, and the Intefada to destabilize Soviet-friendly Afghanistan. But I see nothing to suggest that we are working in China and started fomenting anti-Uighur sentiment among the Han just so that China would be distracted and we could do what we want in South America or whatever. Russia seems to be trying to kick over every democracy's sand castles because he seems to think democracy is a hindrance to Russian greatness.

"The constitution is more of a BDSM agreement with a safe word." - Sandy

"Neoliberalism. Austerity. Booga booga!!!!" - JasonL

"We can't confirm rumors that Lynndie England is in the running to be Gina Haspel's personal aide." - DAR

I don't see the troll farms as any different from most PACs. I also don't think that Russian interference is going have any effect on democracy other than maybe people thinking it has an effect even when it doesn't.

If anything it gives the country a political lever to use against Russia in other negotiations.

I don't see the troll farms as any different from most PACs. I also don't think that Russian interference is going have any effect on democracy other than maybe people thinking it has an effect even when it doesn't.

In the short term, I think it de-legitimizes the role of the private individual making an argument. It throws more weight back to 'authority' figures: If Jane Doe or Richard Roe says stupid shit (or even something true), people are going to disregard it because they can't distinguish Jane or Richard from Ivan's Troll-bot. If Paul Krugmann says stupid shit, people are going to take it seriously, because he is One of the Serious People.

In the long run, I think most people will develop internal bullshit filters to social media, just as they have for advertising: If you look at ads from fifty years ago, you wonder how anyone was swayed by that crap. People have learned to filter the advertising bullshit so ads have become much more selective.

I don't see the troll farms as any different from most PACs. I also don't think that Russian interference is going have any effect on democracy other than maybe people thinking it has an effect even when it doesn't.

If anything it gives the country a political lever to use against Russia in other negotiations.

Again, if the troll farms were the beginning and end of it we wouldn't have Mueller going through the backgrounds and bank accounts of everyone in the White House. But it is almost certainly no coincidence that Trump wound up with a Russian asset (Manafort) running his campaign after spending years doing shady real estate deals with crooked Russian businessmen.

Why is it that every time we talk about Russia and Trump some people feel the need to say they don't care about the troll farms? The troll farms are the least damning part of it. The compromising business deals are the real problem. A man with Trump's business dealings would never be able to get a security clearance if he weren't an elected official.

And this would be just as big of a problem if the troll farms had never existed. In fact, it would be a more obvious problem because we wouldn't have the smoke screen of troll farms to let people be all "Oh, it's just some trolls talking shit on the internet."

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

Why is it that every time we talk about Russia and Trump some people feel the need to say they don't care about the troll farms? The troll farms are the least damning part of it. The compromising business deals are the real problem. A man with Trump's business dealings would never be able to get a security clearance if he weren't an elected official.

In context, I think the troll farms underscore just how horribly bad the whole situation is. Because all the things you mentioned re: corrupt business deals, and all the sleazy things Trump family members are doing to enrich themselves ... were they doing the exact same things with people from England, or Australia, or some other "has been a U.S. friend and ally throughout living memory" it would still be corrupt and illegal, but at least it wouldn't be such a potential threat to national security, as when the Trumps cozy up to the corrupt authoritarian government of a country that was our active enemy throughout the Cold War, and a frenemy-at-best ever since.

"Myself, despite what they say about libertarians, I think we're actually allowed to pursue options beyond futility or sucking the dicks of the powerful." -- Eric the .5b

In the short term, I think it de-legitimizes the role of the private individual making an argument. It throws more weight back to 'authority' figures: If Jane Doe or Richard Roe says stupid shit (or even something true), people are going to disregard it because they can't distinguish Jane or Richard from Ivan's Troll-bot. If Paul Krugmann says stupid shit, people are going to take it seriously, because he is One of the Serious People.

That's not what we're seeing, though. What we're seeing is people teaching themselves to actively disregard anything they disagree with not because it's wrong, but because it's a lie. And that extends to everyone, no matter who they are.

In the long run, I think most people will develop internal bullshit filters to social media, just as they have for advertising: If you look at ads from fifty years ago, you wonder how anyone was swayed by that crap. People have learned to filter the advertising bullshit so ads have become much more selective.

But 50 years ago, people didn't have the ability to shop for information favorable to their worldview in the way we do today. How much effort are people going to put into proving themselves wrong?

"VOTE SHEMOCRACY! You will only have to do it once!" -Loyalty Officer Aresen

In the short term, I think it de-legitimizes the role of the private individual making an argument. It throws more weight back to 'authority' figures: If Jane Doe or Richard Roe says stupid shit (or even something true), people are going to disregard it because they can't distinguish Jane or Richard from Ivan's Troll-bot. If Paul Krugmann says stupid shit, people are going to take it seriously, because he is One of the Serious People.

That's not what we're seeing, though. What we're seeing is people teaching themselves to actively disregard anything they disagree with not because it's wrong, but because it's a lie. And that extends to everyone, no matter who they are.

In the long run, I think most people will develop internal bullshit filters to social media, just as they have for advertising: If you look at ads from fifty years ago, you wonder how anyone was swayed by that crap. People have learned to filter the advertising bullshit so ads have become much more selective.

But 50 years ago, people didn't have the ability to shop for information favorable to their worldview in the way we do today. How much effort are people going to put into proving themselves wrong?

Niche media have been a thing for a long time. But outside of minority groups and fringe politics, yes, normies have never had as much access.

Hindu is the cricket of religions. You can observe it for years, you can have enthusiasts try to explain it to you, and it's still baffling. - Warren

But on one occasion, The Daily Beast has learned, Guccifer failed to activate the VPN client before logging on. As a result, he left a real, Moscow-based Internet Protocol address in the server logs of an American social media company, according to a source familiar with the government’s Guccifer investigation. Twitter and WordPress were Guccifer 2.0’s favored outlets. Neither company would comment for this story, and Guccifer did not respond to a direct message on Twitter.

Working off the IP address, U.S. investigators identified Guccifer 2.0 as a particular GRU officer working out of the agency’s headquarters on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow. (The Daily Beast’s sources did not disclose which particular officer worked as Guccifer.)

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

Shem wrote:Well, there aren't. There's only Czar Vladimir IV and his servitors.

This.

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

A friend of mine is running hard with the Carter Page was an FBI informant in 2013 angle. The idea is he helped them with some guy Podobny who got ejected from the country, so it can't be they thought he was a spy. I don't know what to do with that really.

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

With Cohen turning out to be a link to Russia, I'm left wondering if there's an untold story about Stormy Daniels coming forward. On the surface, what did she stand to gain? She was risking penalties for breaking the hush agreement, her legal argument for why it wasn't valid was questionable (according to Popehat), and revealing that Trump had an affair with a pr0n star wouldn't really change what we knew of him. So, on the surface, she was risking financial penalties for questionable publicity gains and no real political traction.

But exposing Cohen to investigative reporting scrutiny has also turned up other stuff.

Did somebody urge her to do this in the knowledge that Cohen couldn't withstand scrutiny?

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem

"ike Wile E. Coyote salivating over a "4000 Ways To Prepare Roadrunner" cookbook without watching his surroundings, the Road Runner of Societal Inertia snuck up on them both and beepbeeped them off the mesa."
--Shem